One of the wonderful things about being on holiday together is the luxury of time. We’re not rushing in the morning to get ready for school, getting dressed, breakfasted, brushed and packed for the day ahead. Instead we have the leisurely wake up followed by a lazy get out of bed. I am very fortunate this holiday that my beautiful daughter seems to have adapted from her usual 7.30 wake up time to a far nicer 8.30 wake up! My son has always enjoyed a lazy lie in and even when he does wake up first, likes to read in bed with a lovely book – his current favourite being Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

The children like to play in their pyjamas for a bit and one of them is usually hungry for an almost immediate breakfast. Depending on what we’ve eaten the night before, the grown-ups may or may not join the kids. Husband is quite likely to be either: already out running, or just returned from a run, or about to run a great distance; so he’s not always ready to eat when the kids are, but the joy of a holiday is that we can eat when we want to and I like to treat myself with a holiday breakfast!

On school days we almost always eat porridge. If I don’t eat porridge in the morning I feel ravenously hungry by about 10a.m and lunch in the Spanish system is at 2pm in the afternoon, so porridge is a good start to a long morning!

A holiday is a chance to move away from porridge for a while and the kids love their holiday fix of Weetabix or Chocapic (a chocolatey cereal we have discovered in Spain) or Smacks – another Spanish cereal suspiciously like sugar puffs but with more sugar!!

I also like to indulge my sweet tooth on the holiday and can either make pancakes or, as we have a Carrefour supermarket close by, we are lucky enough to be able to buy lovely frozen partly baked croissants. Pop them in the oven for 20 mins and they are done, nice warm croissants out of the oven, what more could a girl want?

Well, a girl could want quite a lot really. A lovely warm croissant has to be accompanied by the following:

·Butter for spreading

·Freshly trimmed strawberries or other fruit

·A good cup of coffee

·A tall drink of water or juice

·Some jam

Also nice but not absolutely necessary:

·Nice table linen

·Some good music in the background

·Drinks for the children (so I don't have to keep getting up and down like a Jack in the box)

·Mini chocolate muffins, another Carrefour speciality

·Yoghurt or cream or any leftover pouring sweet stuff from the fridge

·At Easter, any bits of chocolate egg that can be scavenged from the children

So, this is my holiday treat, a breakfast of champions and of course, inevitably, the children want some croissants and strawberries too, so they sit down and feel very proud that this is their second breakfast of the morning. Even as I am writing, they’ve gone back to the table to demolish another croissant and I guess that will count as elevenses...

5 comments:

Love it! Those relaxed holiday mornings where breakfast and morning tea merge are just the best...I'm very envious that your kids will sleep in. I also have a runner husband and if he doesn't wake us all up getting ready to go out for an early run, one of the cats will decide that it's time to get up. It's a real treat if Sioned sleeps in past 6.30am.x

Thanks Beth, maybe the early mornings in Australia are something to do with the lifestyle...we do stay up late here in Spain.....kids in bed about 8.30p.m. in the holidays, sometimes later. We're also considering getting a dog but one of the selfish factors to consider is that now the kids are sleeping in, I would prefer not to be woken up by a dog in the morning....

the second breakfast that merry and pippin were imagining (comprised mostly of "tatoes") is a far cry from the delightful one you had with the kids. i could eat a million buttered croissants on a lazy sunday. once aaron is past his "milk milk milk every 3 hours" stage, i'm going to train him to bring me breakfast in bed :)

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A Welsh girl from South Wales: feminista, passionate reader and practising writer, part time English teacher, full time mother and wife. Did a Drama degree, travelled, lost love and found love, married an English boy and travelled around the world. Worked in Qatar for 8 years, had two beautiful babies, returned to the UK for 3 years and now working and writing and enjoying life in Sunny Spain